Cancer is one of the most fatally disease to threaten human-being. The mortality rate resulted from cancer is only less to blood vessel disease in all kind of disease, and in some developed country, it's the first cause. In 90's, the incidence of a cancer is over 2,000,000 per year in china. The treatment on cancer in clinic is usually by chemotherapy, operation and irradiation.
Cisplatin have been used extensively in clinic since it has been found to have excellent antitumor activity by Rosenberg in 1969, and it has been used to treat bladder cancer, prostatic carcinoma, adenocarcinoma of lung, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, lymphoma and leukemia. However, the water solubility of cisplatin is poor and can only be administrated by injection. It's found that cisplatin exhibit heavy toxic on the kidney, the gastrointestinal tract, ear and never, and resistance to drug will occur after administrated over a long period of time.
Thus, there are more and more attentions have been focused on novel metal complexes, and its show that platinum, rhodium, germanium, and tin complexes, especially ruthenium complexes exhibit excellent antitumor activity.